I was actually asked to build a spell checker in an interview. I immediately thought of Peter Norvig's article on spell corrector (https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html) and proceeded to explain. It turned out that the interviewer really wanted a spell checker not spell corrector: the program will only point out words not in the set of known words.

I failed that interview by overengineering.

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dehrmann 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I failed that interview by overengineering.

Almost. You needed to clarify what the interviewer was asking and discover requirements. As much as HN likes to hate on coding interviews requiring specific algorithm knowledge, determining requirements is very much part of the job, and engineers have a tendency to build what they want to build, not what the customer wants.

	▲	elzbardico 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't care about people who like to overengineer things, as long as they are humble and have awareness of this tendency. Sometimes you need the extra power and creativity. If they are affable and don't take critics personally, they usually get in with the program easily.

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Gibbon1 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Marvin the Paranoid Android voice. 'Oh... that. Just do a linear search on a dictionary. Put the small words first. I know it's woefully inefficient but you won't fuck that up'